Jihadi Janes and Johns: The Seduction of the Islamic State for ‘Westerners’

Media outlets and government circles cringe when trying to understand why Westerners leave the West to go fight in Syria and Iraq with the Islamic State. While calculating accurate numbers wildly diverges from source to source, there is no doubt that the fact that ANYONE at all wants to leave and join ISIL/DAESH makes the U.S. and EU both uncomfortable and perplexed.

In short, how does one leave the land of the free, tolerant, open and just in order to go fight for a group that represents horror and atrocity? Unfortunately for all those shocked by the images of beheadings and immolation, understanding this process (and more importantly the failure of intelligence and diplomatic communities in the West to prevent it) requires one to accept something most EU and American passport holders cannot: that the dream of Western civilization for too many in the modern day seems more myth than reality.

The true reality in the West is if you are not able to hook into upward mobility and access privileged success, then a dull and depressing life awaits you: studies, for example, show a disturbing percentage of Americans are born, live, and die within an incredibly small 50-mile radius. They also show that the classic parental definition of the American Dream – that your children will be better off and have more than you – has become murky and ill-defined with the Millenial generation. When you travel into most cosmopolitan urban centers in America, you will find not a smoothly fitted mosaic of multiple cultures and cross-cutting identity cleavages that make people realize that there are always important similarities linking people together. Instead you find Balkanized enclaves where ‘people stick to their own’ and the ‘well-to-do’ are quickly made aware of the places not to go and where not to congregate. Almost exclusively those areas are ‘ethnic’ bastions and de facto segregated sections of the city. To be completely honest, this ethnic balkanization, semi-voluntary/semi-forced, is arguably even more pronounced in major European hubs like London, Paris, and Berlin. The idea of Western Civilization is an amazing testimony to what any country should be and strive for: namely, that anyone can succeed based on talent, ambition, merit, and effort; that despite obstacles and adversity there will always be opportunity; that all people can live, love, and dream without interference or harassment. This idea, however, too often remains distant and unreachable to many, making the dream seem deeply taunting and an inducement to self-loathing.

Against this backdrop, it is inexcusable that American and European actors find themselves at a loss to understand the appeal of that small percentage willing to abandon the West and go fight for a cause that they believe to be barbarous, for a group and a cause that seems most ignoble. To see the problem in this light is not so much a failure to understand the enemy as it is a failure to see how Western civilization has created for some a modern living reality that is dominated by less-appealing shades of grey: flawed, unfulfilled, denied, isolated, violent, and poor. Perhaps worst of all, it is a reality of irrelevance. The people going off to fight with the Islamic State are able to ‘leave the West’ because they clearly don’t feel as if they are leaving anything at all, except a myth not available to them or a taunt to make them feel demeaned. Turning hatred of self into hatred of other with this group is what the Islamic State is so good at.

The U.S. State Department clearly does not do a great job recognizing this reality of the denied underground. The EU does no better. What you come across instead when discussing this issue are confused looks and exasperated gasps at the inexplicable stupidity of people leaving to go fight with the Islamic State. That incredulity, however, is based on a vision of the West that the underground does not see and, more importantly, does not believe it will ever be given access to. In short, one can live ‘in the West’ and never feel a true part ‘of the West.’ This is not semantics. Nor is it a matter of dismissively sneering at people who are supposedly too lazy or too unwilling to assimilate the values of Western civilization. Rather, it is a complex interwoven sociological failure that fuses together politics, economics, geography, religion, and psychology. While that failure makes too many feel isolated from the dream of the West, it does not stop people from still wanting to believe in some form of greatness and destiny: people will always love to dream. And if the brand-name dream of the West seems shut off to them, it doesn’t mean another dream cannot replace it. Indeed, any greatness, any higher calling that gives purpose and a sense of larger destiny to life, can gradually become incredibly seductive. If the American Dream classically defined is deemed inaccessible, then we in the West must be ready to believe more radical and seemingly inexplicable visions will be able to take its place. The vision of the Islamic State, which Western media portrays in finely-tuned snippets heavily laden with atrocities and bloodshed, is in fact a slickly produced inundation of media-friendly images focused on religious epiphany, glorious sacrifice, and noble causes to battle. It is a clarion call heard through the ages, across all continents and within all countries, which has always been able to find willing ears and malleable minds. Only now this call is being powerfully pushed with the advantages of 21st century virtual technology, making its reach and scope far beyond anything the West could ever think plausible or find believable. In today’s world, style trumps substance for most. And as anathema as it may seem to the West, that axiom applies even to groups like the Islamic State.

One of the fundamental principles in intelligence is to gain insight into adversaries by truly understanding their worldviews, self-assessments, cultures, and perceptions. How ironic then that this issue so close to home is not just about people rejecting the West and leaving but the intrinsic fear that these ‘foreign fighters’ might one day succeed in returning back to the West more radicalized, intent on committing mayhem on domestic shores instead of foreign. We do not understand this underground because we will not remove the blinders of the myth of Western Civilization. We are not just ignorant to the world that creates a group like the Islamic State: we are fairly ignorant of the very world right outside our door that might be taken by it. Consequently, the key to understanding this ‘perverse attraction’ to ISIL/DAESH might be first accepting the self-loathing resentment some have had symbolically burned into them, day after day after day, about the West. Keep in mind none of this is an entreaty to sympathize with those who leave Western shores to take up arms with the Islamic State. ISIL/DAESH is indeed a manipulative, corrupt, criminal, and mind-blowingly sadistic organization. Effective recruiting videos and social media campaigns notwithstanding, it is promising a life and society that is even more mythical than the American Dream. No, this is not an explanation justifying the decision to fight with them. It is rather the first step to expose why those of in the West charged with stopping this disturbing trend have proven, so far, to be utterly inept in unraveling its motivational calculus. We have made it more complex than it needs to be: it is not about espousing the sly seduction of the beast from without. It is about exposing the soul-sucking devastation of the beast from within.

MD Executive Vice Chairman
Dr. Matthew Crosston is Senior Faculty for the Doctoral Programs in Global Security and Strategic Intelligence at the American Military University. He has published top-tier research that has impacted real world decision-making in the US and beyond, with over 30 peer-reviewed scholarly articles and over 100 analytical editorials and commissioned opinion pieces representing the full spectrum of global security translated into Russian, Arabic, Chinese, Indonesian, Hebrew, Spanish, Turkish, Farsi, Greek, and Uzbek. Currently a Senior Research Fellow at the Institute for National Security Studies in Tel Aviv, Israel, Crosston has won global fellowships at the Research Institute for European and American Studies, the China Eurasia Council for Political and Strategic Research, and was the first American invited to conduct political analysis for the Russian International Affairs Council in Moscow, Russia. He has a BA from Colgate University, MA from the University of London, and PhD from Brown University.
https://americanmilitary.academia.edu/DrMatthewCrosston

Terrorism and Mass Media: A Reflection from the Sri Lanka Terror Attack

The world
shivers at the mention of terrorism. The international news storylines mostly
present two hegemonic undertakings: the economic and power game ruling blocks
comprising US, Russia, China, EU and so forth, on one hand, and the true
battlegrounds of ruling blocks in Syria, Yemen, Palestine, Afghanistan, Iraq
and so forth, one the other. May be the storylines presented by the
international media is not the true reflection of undertakings the world should
know, and a lot more remain under presented behind those storylines. On the top
of that, media houses play a twisted role in creating antagonists and
protagonists in international geopolitics and assigning roles to different
actors.

The
terrorism, as we knew and believed once, has been changed in last couple of
decades since the attack on the World Trade Center in New York in 2001. Not
only terrorism has been changed after the World Trade Center in the emergence
of new actors in the international power game but also it changed the perception
of people about the religions and geopolitics; especially Islam and Middle
East. In last March, A terror attack killed around fifty Muslims and left many
injured during the Friday prayer in a mosque in Christchurch, New Zealand. The
international media mostly labeled it as shooting and the terrorist as a
shooter. The terrorist livestreamed the whole attack like an animated videogame
and inscribed some hate speeches on the gun he used in the attack. The incident
in the Christchurch, New Zealand, is not the only attack on Muslim communities
in recent years but one of the many incidents and the it is becoming
frequent. After the Christchurch
incident in New Zealand, a massive terror attack demanded a death toll amounting
253 innocent lives on Ester Sunday last month in Sri Lanka. After the terror
attack Sri Lanka, international news storylines undoubted labeled it as a
terrorist activity and proactively probed the link with the local and
international terrorist groups like Islamic State (IS) and the local terrorist
group National Thowfeek Jamaath. While
it is beyond the proof yet whether the Sri Lanka Attack was a consequence of
New Zealand attack, the proactive role of international media was noticeable to
make an express linkage between the two. Media decide who should be called a
terrorist based on his region or color not the fact that terrorism ransoms the
equally without the consideration of religious or color of victims. A handful
number of people died in Sri Lanka terror attack were Muslims.

This is a
one-type of bias mass media play in response to terrorism. But in regard to
terrorism there are numerous biased and nonsense roles mass media have been
playing. It is said that a terrorist is always successful because he produces
the level of fears and panics that changes the courses of longstanding
societal, political and interfaith interactions among different groups,
communities, regions and countries.
While mass media only probe the linkage of religions with the terrorism,
they hardly concentrate on economic, political and social motives of terrorism.
Either a mosque or a church or a chapel is mostly targeted and this strategy of
terrorism give it an universal advantage. For example, if a mosque in New
Zealand is attacked, it raises the concern of Muslim communities living in West
and Muslin-minority countries around the world, on the other hand, if a Church
is attacked anywhere of the World it raises the concern of non-Muslims about
Muslims around the World; while an attack on non-religious places may not reach
such an universal advantage. Media grabs a terrorist activity, widely publishes
it, links it with religions, especially with Islam, and complements the
objective terrorism dividing societies, and creating fears and panics.

The
terrorism in any form is a threat to the peaceful coexistence around the world.
However, the place that faces the problem faces an extensive and long-lasting
challenge. Historically, Sri Lanka is a politically turbulent place just ending
a phase of civil conflict with the LTTE around a decade ago. Last year it faced
an anti-Muslin riots that destroyed a mosque and raised a communal tension
around the country. As acknowledged by
local and international security agencies, they had prior knowledge of an
upcoming attack. Despite the fact of prior knowledge, security agencies in Sri
Lanka did not take any preventive action. Sri Lanka is currently undergoing
some political transitions that started from October 2018. President
Maithripala Sirisena announced that Mahinda Rajapaksa is the new Prime
Minister. Although, by various forces Sirisena removes Rajapaksa and returned
Wickremesinghe. In this unstable situation miscreant takes the advantage of
terror attack.The terror attack on the verge of that transition and the non-preventive
activity by security forces indicate a political connection with the terror
attack. Some block might have been taking advantage of this turbulent
situation. Historically, the Sri Lankan turbulence with the LTTE was fueled by
different external and internal blocks. Instead of going with the flow, mass
media should play an investigate role to probe the other reasons like
political, economic and geopolitical reasons behind the terror attack.

In
Christchurch attack, the terrorist Brenton Tarrant livestreamed the attack on
Facebook. The livestreamed video was reposted and rebroadcasted millions of
times in different local and international media around the world. While it is
clear that Brenton Tarrant wanted the world to watch the video, by reposting and
rebroadcasting the video media complemented a terrorist’s objective. This
tendency of media was seen in some previous terrorist attacks. In 2016, the
terror attack in a residential hotel in Dhaka was livestreamed by several
national and international media. In recent India-Pakistan border conflict
media from both countries played a provocative role. Some media house in India
compared the Indian invasion in Pakistan with the patriotism. This is
definitely a breach of media’s broadcast standards.

In case of
Sri Lanka terror attack, media relied on previous IS attacks to probe a linkage
between the IS and the local National Thowfeek Jamaath. It is, however, true
that attacks by IS or local terrorist group cannot be sidestepped. But the
focus on IS and local terror group targeted some local innocent people and
Muslims that created another bias and discrimination on the local community.
Moreover, the focus on the IS and its associated group may shade the actual
perpetuator if some group other than IS is responsible for the attack. Even
some media proactively created a presuming linkage of Sri Lankan attack with
the Christchurch attack. This again aggravated the situation in Sri Lanka and
around the world.

It is
generally presumed that media houses are concerned about the increasing the TRP
and public viewing volumes by broadcasting controversial news storylines. This
sick competition leads media houses globally to go beyond their broadcasting
standards. Media is said, however, to be the “Fourth Estate” of democracy
whereas increasing the TRP or viewing volumes by sick competition is an
opposite to the notion. There should have some ethical standards and
regulations regarding broadcasting the news and storylines grounded on the
policy of harnessing communities and promoting global peace not dividing the
world into pieces.

Related

Kashmir: EAMs at the LOC

First, it was Zahedan where an IRGC
convoy; returning home from their tour of duty, along the borders of
Sistan-Baluch, are suddenly ambushed and nearly annihilated. As the sun begins
to rise at dawn, on the next day, (the 14th of February), over Pulwama in
Kashmir, a strikingly similar event occurs to a much larger CRPF convoy, this
time returning to duty.

The authorities of the two affected
nations issue immediate statements, (which are almost identical in tone and
accusation), against elements resident within the territory of their shared
common neighbour. Both independently issued statements seem to mirror each
other in content and threat, as if they were Page 1 and Page 2 of a document
seemingly prepared in advance within a spirit of “friendly collaboration”.

The initial murder of the Iranian
Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corpsmen garnered almost no world media exposure,
whereas the killing of the Indian Central Reserve Police Force para-militarymen
exploded into an International Diplomatic Crisis that eventually required the
frantic intervention of the Heads of State of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, the
United Arab Emirates, diplomatic envoys of the Peoples’ Republic of China, the
Russia Federation, the UN and ofcourse, everyone’s favourite peacemaker and
arbiter of international law and order, the US of A, to pacify emotions and
reign in a possibly perceived; potentially imminent; Nuclear Confrontation
between two adversarial neighbours, neither of whom recognize the legal
sovereign nation status of the other.

Two weeks after Pulwama, in VietNam,
whilst the US Head of State begins to dictate meaningless (and impossible to
honour), terms and conditions towards the Democratic Peoples’ Republic of
Korea’s nuclear disarmament; the gravity of Pulwama is suddenly dragged onto
centre stage as a possible Zero Hero event on the Doomsday Clock.

In an intentional act of war, (on
the 26th of February), which is then openly glorified as live, patriotic
entertainment, the Indian Air Force cross the Line of Control and bomb
territory within Pakistan. In the intervening two weeks prior to this dubiously
illegal infringement of a neighbour’s property, the world watched in awe at the
mechanics of an electronic media that had been effectively tooled as an
integrated weaponised instrument, and; also a consummate component of both, the
Armed Forces and the State apparatus of an elected Government, with the sole
aim of coordinating a line of thought; from which any deviation from the
prescribed script was deemed to be a criminal offence.

News media, not so much the print
media in terms of newspapers, but rather the online applications of instant
messaging; exposed the gargantuan influence and capability that MultiNational
Corporations have within any (and all), semi-developed, emerging economic
nations: to create and guide a story that seamlessly blurs and oscillates
between confusion and surreal fiction. Painting an illusion, as it were, or a
dream swirling around disjoint facts.

On the 27th of February, the next
day, the Pakistan Air Force duly retaliate and it seems that the elected Prime
Minister of the world’s largest democracy had finally gone rogue and had
totally unhinged himself from reality with instructions to his Armed Forces to
target nuclear installations within his neighbour’s territory.

At 7.40 AM Eastern Standard Time on
the 27th of February, all Globex Futures Trading in the United States are
suspended and the S&P, Dow and Oil indexes cease trading for over 4 hours,
with the added excitement of all pending orders, prior to the halt, having
their executions specifically cancelled. (Although Currency Exchange platforms
remained active). Also on the 26th and 27th of February, Emergency Action
Messages or EAMs of the US Nuclear Command and Control Structure commence
firing up HFGCS (High Frequency Global Communication System) transmissions,
which are a prelude to a Nuclear Alert.

So, why would an internal domestic
attack on a police convoy within India lead to EAMs being issued at the LOC,
(the Line Of Control within the disputed region of Kashmir). You may answer by
saying that the reason is simply because Kashmir is a potential nuclear
flashpoint, and that would be eminently correct. But my question would then be,
why would this flashpoint be triggered when President Trump and Chairman Un are
discussing the consequences of such an occurrence being played out for real
between themselves?

The eternal question always remains,
“who benefits?”. What message has the world at large been given?

CENTCOM or Central Command and the
USINDOPACOM or the US Indo-Pacific Command of the US Armed Forces, are two
gigantic military institutions that are run as autonomous and totally opaque
entities by their respective Generals who see themselves as Roman Tribunes
rather than Commanding Officers, with more power than their elected Head of
State; under whom they, in effect, nominally serve. CENTCOM’s sphere of
influence includes the carnage and the waste that they have laid to the
sovereign nations of Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan and, that influence ends at the
eastern border of Pakistan. In May 2018, when the previously titled entity
USPACOM or US Pacific Command changed its name to the US Indo Pacific Command
and suddenly incorporated India into its sphere of influence, their remit then
began to encompass all territory upto the western border of India and, lo and
behold, both spheres of these gigantic killing machines meet at the Line of
Control within the volatile and disputed region of Kashmir.

Would the subsequent events leading
from Pulwama have been a test run to gauge the effectiveness of integrated
electronic media in India, which is thus by default, the most established
English language denominated media at USINDOPACOM’s disposal? Would it have
been a weaponised trial in propagating an explosive narrative draped as high
drama in order to influence, coerce, intimidate and subsume a diverse society
to toe the line? Was it to keep Pakistan on the straight and narrow and make it
clear to them how close they were to being obliterated were it not for the kind
benevolence of CENTCOM intervention; a similar muscular feat that China perhaps
would not have been able to effectively co-ordinate so quickly.

So although, on the face of it, the
Prime Minister of India plays the well rehearsed role of the village fool,
entwining within it, (in order to appeal to a barely semi-literate audience);
his own myth of having risen from the ranks of poverty and social ostracisation
to become the elected leader of a huge and diverse nation and with the Prime
Minister of Pakistan playing the well constructed role of the suave, Western
debonair who achieved his elected position after years of political struggle;
both however remain actors playing lines they have been given within a huge
stage production.

If either of them were truly
representative of the will of their constituents as well as the projection of
the visions of the future that their electorates see in themselves, then
neither would have played leading roles in a scene that required EAMs at the
LOC.

The only beneficiaries are the Roman Tribunes of the two COMMANDs of
the US Armed Forces, who quietly engaged themselves in a live-fire exercise to
test their proprietary war game theories and then gathered the subsequent
extrapolated algorithmic data for future reference.

As Crazy Earl says in the epic Kubrick movie, Full Metal Jacket;
“These are great days we’re living, bros. We are jolly green giants, walking
the Earth with guns. These people we wasted here today are the finest human
beings we will ever know. After we rotate back to the world, we’re gonna miss
not having anyone around that’s worth shooting”.

Related

Pakistan’s commitment to eradicate terrorism is more advance than UNSC

Big blow to Indian diplomacy by United Nation Security Council (UNSC), when passed a resolution declaring JAISH-e-Muhammad (JeM) chief Maulana Masood Azhar as a global terrorist under the United Nations Security Council Resolution 1267, without linking him with Pulwama, or Kashmir Freedom Movement.

India, traditional rival, has been trying to
blame Masood Azhar on suspicions of his possible involvement in Pulwama
Incident, Bombay Attacks, Hijacking Indian Air, or Kashmir Freedom Movement.
Since 2008, the US attempted four times to get Masood Azhar listed under the
UNSC resolution 1267 but every time its move was thwarted by China. “The
Security Council Committee pursuant to resolutions 1267 (1999), 1989 (2011) and
2253 (2015) concerning ISIL (Da’ish), al Qaeda, and associated individuals,
groups, undertakings and entities approved the addition of entry to its ISIL
(Da’ish) and Al-Qaeda Sanctions List of individuals and entities subject to the
assets freeze, travel ban and arms embargo.” The resolution was limited to ISIL
(Da’ish), Al-Qaeda only. But Indian addition of Kashmir or other incidents
related to India made the resolution unfit on technical grounds.

Pakistan
had rejected earlier proposals to list the JeM chief, as India wanted to link
it with the movement in Indian Occupied Kashmir where Kashmiris are waging
struggle to get their inalienable right of self-determination. Pakistan’s FO
spokesperson said, “India is presenting this new development as its victory and
confirmation of its narrative, but these claims are unfounded and false. Once
politically motivated attempts to link it with the Pulwama incident and the
legitimate Kashmiri struggle for the realization of the right to self-determination
were removed, the current amended listing proposal was approved.” Of course,
China withdrew its opposition after consultations with Pakistan, and that
Pakistan agreed to the listing after its objections were addressed. China and
Pakistan are on the same page and support each other on all national,
international or regional issues. During his recent visit to China, Prime
Minister Imran Khan had met President Xi Jinping and Prime Minister Li Keqiang
and discussed matters of mutual interest. Reviewing with satisfaction the
historical development of China-Pakistan relations and the great strides made,
both sides in the joint statement agreed to further strengthen the
China-Pakistan all-weather strategic cooperative partnership in line with the principles
set forth by the treaty of friendship, cooperation and good-neighborly
relations signed in 2005.

This time,
the resolution was presented on its original merit and got passed. As per the
resolution, his assets should be frozen, travel ban and arms embargo should be
imposed. But, Pakistan due to its own policies, has already frozen his assets
and imposed a ban on his travel and arms embargo since long ago.

In a matter
of fact, Pakistan was the victim of terrorism for almost the last four decades.
We have sacrificed 80,000 precious lives, which no other nation can afford. We
suffered an economic loss of approximately 250 billion US Dollars, which no
other country can afford individually. The net loss in term of time, losing 4
decades means loss of almost two generations. Emotional suffering is much more
and beyond any estimation.

Pakistan
was compelled to formulate “National Action Plan” at its own and has been
implementing successfully for several years. Our achievement to the over-come
menace of Terrorism has been acknowledged by the international community. Under
the National Action Plan, Pakistan has taken all possible measures to eradicate
terrorism from grassroots. Actions against Masood Azhar was part of our
national priority. It has nothing to do with any third country.

UNSC’s
decision in respect of Masood Azhar may be the last nail in Modi’s Elections.
Indian Elections are based on “anti-Pakistan” and “hate-Pakistan”, Modi did his
best to hate-Pakistan, harm-Pakistan, Isolate-Pakistan, etc. But all of his
efforts went wrong and Pakistan has emerged as one of the most resilient
nation, moderate, peace-loving and visionary nation. Pakistan’s narrative is
more acceptable to the international community.